Skip to main content

Monday Links - 2022-03-14

·434 words·3 mins
Sujal Shah
Author
Sujal Shah
I am a startup veteran & former Disney and ESPN technology executive primarily across their digital consumer products. I help companies build software products and teams. I also write about technology, innovation, and random electronics projects.

Hitting a stride on my (very simple, likely uninteresting to anyone but me) side project, so starting to think about deployment and testing. Inspires a few links below.

  • The future of computers is only $4 away, with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton: A wide ranging conversation with Eben Upton, the CEO of Raspberry Pi Ltd., the company that makes everyone’s favorite single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi. I didn’t know the history of the Foundation and the project, so this was a fun conversation to listen to. I must have about 10 Raspberry Pis of different sizes doing things around the house. They are brilliant little machines.
  • Linux has been bitten by its most high-severity vulnerability in years: This is a new local kernel vulnerability, and you know it’s serious because it’s referred to by a name (“Dirty Pipe”) rather than just a CVE number. 😉 If you’re going to run lots of Linux boxes in your house on Raspberry Pis (or whatever), make sure you secure them.
  • Project Pockit: Speaking of Raspberry Pis, saw this modular computer/sensor/anything project posted to Reddit the other day. The prototype is built on the Raspberry Pi CM4. Looks brilliant, though I have a ton of questions about the programming model and portability of code. Still, very, very cool. The comment threads on the various Reddit posts (it got re-shared a LOT) are interesting if you’re into hardware projects.
  • Google Checks - Privacy Platform: Looks like an interesting developer tool from Google that tries to detect privacy issues at development/release time. I didn’t sign up for the beta (not developing for Android yet), but am intrigued.
  • Secure your JavaScript supply chain: Installs as a Github app and monitors key files in your JS projects (e.g. package.json) to detect vulnerabilities in the third-party code. The dirty secret for a lot of modern app development is that developers are pulling in dozens (if not a hundred+) third party open source packages to build their apps. It makes us all faster, but creates a dependency tree that most people can’t reason about in their heads. Tools like this are valuable, and the easier they are to integrate, the most likely they are to get used. This one looks interesting, may play around with it in my project.
  • NASA 3D Models - 3D printable: A fun one to end the list today: NASA has released STL files (printable 3D models) of a number of key missions and spacecraft, from the Apollo 11 Landing Site to the James Webb Telescope to hurricanes imaged from satellites. Pretty cool collection. Will try to print one soon.